Marnie Stern

Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week it's Marnie Stern, who laments all the terrible movies she's downloaded lately, ponders the age of William Shatner , and gets yours truly into a conversation about our favorite show on television, "House".
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Favorite Records of the Past Year __

Erase Errata: * Nightlife *

Mick Barr's Orthrelm

Neil Haggerty

__ >> Favorite Older Records at the Moment __

A lot of Talking Heads, like "Once in a Lifetime", "Take Me to the River". I love the lyrics in all of those songs.

And the Stones. I've been listening to the Rolling Stones song "Monkey Man".

Patti Smith: * Horses *

__ >> Favorite Song Ever __

The Who: "Baba O'Riley"
The intro is just...everything. I love the fucking intro. And the way it builds, I've been trying to incorporate that part of it in my records, like "Vibrational Match", kind of. Originally the guitar was to give that kind of feeling of blending and stuff, as opposed to piano or keyboard or whatever.

__ >> Best Recent Concert __

I saw here, it was fun: __ Bobby Conn __ . We saw that at this place the __ Fools Foundation __ , which is a space that people play here [in Sacramento]. That was pretty fun.

__ >> Last Great Film I Saw __

Since I've been here I have downloaded...I mean I feel I'm going to jail-- well, I discovered the torrent-- but I feel I've downloaded, I would say, honestly 40 or 50 movies, which I hear isn't that bad, you know, for jail. But I mean, because I've pretty much been staying in the studio and a little bit with Zach [Hill], I have all of this time to just sit....But every movie is a pile of garbage! I don't even watch them, I play video games while I listen to the movie [ * laughs * ].

It isn't garbage, but we saw * Knocked Up * and chuckled. We saw * Breach * : okay; it's better than a poke in the eye but not fantastic. I watched * Alpha Dog * : boring. Well, the thing is Zach and his girlfriend rent a lot of documentaries, but whenever I go to their house I just fall asleep at the beginning. I'm sure those are all very good, but I haven't made it through past 10 minutes.

I'll tell you what movie I'm frickin' excited to see, but this is just me: * Live Free or Die Hard * , you know, * Die Hard * * 4 * . Coming to a theatre near you! I love * Die Hard * . I love the action movies. I love, love, love the action movies. So I'm excited to see that.

Another movie I saw last night was Al Pacino in * 88 Minutes * , I don't even know if it went to the goddamn theatres. He looks unbelievably terrible. Like, in the Rolling Stones category. Dyed hair, he's over-tanned, he's really is not looking good at all. And in the movie he's having sex with 25 year-olds.

__ >> Last Great Book I Read __

I brought with me this thing called * The Listening Book * , which is really interesting. It's, like, to facilitate you opening your mind, listening to different sounds just in regular life, to help you-- I think it's basically for the layman who naturally always says, "Well I can't sing, I can't do this, I can't do that," and then it sort of opens your mind to it.

__ >> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment __

Double-neck Epiphone. Very bitchin'.

__ >> Favorite Record Store __

Other Music
I bought the new Panda Bear record there.

__ >> Best Purchase of the Past Year __

I got a credit card with a super high limit, so it's not a purchase, but it's a potential purchase [ * laughs * ]. Well I'll tell you-- I knew this was going to happen-- Zach needed to get a drum ride or something, so we went to the music store, and there was an Ibanez clear guitar that lights up! I want it * so * badly: $5,000. And also extremely heavy. It has LEDs! A lighting system, like, it's * so * me, what do we do? I want it really, really bad.

Warning: Spoiler Alert *
"House!" Now let me tell you, I missed three of the episodes-- hello torrent! You just download them right away. TV shows, too. But then I found this other website where you can just watch them.

__ Pitchfork: __ Me too, and they have all the episodes of "House". It's my favorite show, too. *

Are they going to keep him a drug addict? They have to.

__ Pitchfork: __ They have to, I guess, but you saw the last episode, right? When the three doctors all quit... *

Oh, yeah yeah yeah! The real life lovers are no longer together, or are they together?
__

Pitchfork: * __ * I guess they might be, but it doesn't matter, because they're not on the show anymore. *

Don't you love when Dr. House doses the dude with psychedelics and the other doctor gives him anti-depressants, and then House catches himself smiling in the mirror and he's like, "What's going on?" [ * laughs * ] Let me ask you this: Do you watch "Lost"?

__ Pitchfork: __ No, I got into it in the first season, but sort of stopped watching it during the second. *

Well that's the thing, I never watched it, and then I wanted to pick something that I could watch a billion episodes of. For some reason on the last tour I kept trying to watch it in the van, but it kept making me scared. It's scary. I don't want to feel lost when I'm on tour. I don't like it. But then I got here and then I started watching season three, and stuff just started happening, and I was like, "This is more interesting." Oh, one of the other movies I saw was called * We Are Marshall * with Matthew Fox: he stinks. He has the same schtick all the time, the same approach, the same welling up of tears [ * laughs * ]. I mean, maybe I'm critical, but it seems he's a one-noter.

__ >> Favorite Video Game __

Okay, when I'm at home I play the * Guitar Hero * . But I went to a barbecue a couple days ago and the person had * Karaoke Revolution * . Have you heard of that? You sing and it registers the note, and when you go out of pitch the arrow changes-- it feels sort of like you're on stage with monitors. So that was interesting.

Then my friend put on my computer old Nintendo...what do you call them? Not RAM...

__ Pitchfork: __ An emulator? *

An emulator! So I played this game that's like * Tetris * but it's not * Tetris * ; it's like rearranging blocks, and I got really into that. There's also-- I can't believe how embarrassing this is [ * laughs * ], but there is also... __ Pogo.com __ . It's this games site with the idea that you can win money, but you never can. People are supposed to get, like, 20 million tokens, and it would take years and years of nonstop play to amass that many tokens, with really no chance of winning anything. It's unbelievable. [ * laughs * ] But you got to fill the time when you're in the studio alone.

__ >> Favorite Radio Show __

I just did this thing for __ Club Awesome __ , which is a podcast on NPR.

__ >> My Ringtone __

It's a recording of William Shatner saying, "Pick up the phone, you fool!" Do you know how old he is? He's old! Look it up. I would probably say mid-70s. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's 70.

__ * Pitchfork: * __ * [after Googling] He's 76. Wow, he is old. *

I'm right, right? He's old!

__ Pitchfork: __ So he was already pretty old as Captain Kirk. *

That's right, but if you look back you can sort of see that he was kind of old back then, too [ * laughs * ].